Full transcript

In 2005 Vatican investigators visited every seminary in the United States, asking searching questions about the presence of unorthodox theology and homosexuality within seminary walls. We spoke with Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton about what many called a 'witch hunt'. Also, a conversation with Sister Michelle Reid, a Benedictine nun working with ex-militia prisoners in East Timor's Becora prison.

Transcript

David Rutledge: Hello from David Rutledge - and welcome to the fifth and final in the Religion Report's Summer Series of highlight programs from the past twelve months. This week we're featuring a conversation with Sister Michelle Reid, who works with former militia members in East Timor's Becora prison.

But we begin this week with the ever-unfolding crisis over homosexuality in the Catholic Church.

Back in October last year, America's 229 Catholic seminaries, or academies for priests, were visited by a team of inspectors sent by Rome in what some commentators described as a witch-hunt for homosexuals and liberals. The Roman inspectors were officially called Apostolic Visitors - and they had a little list. The list was called the Instrumentum Laboris, and it was a list of questions that were being put to every seminarian and every seminary professor in the United States. The questions included: Does the seminary faithfully follow the teachings of Rome on matters of morality? How does the seminary monitor the behaviour of its seminarians? And, Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary? And all this was paid for by America's 67 million Catholics.

But not all of the American bishops were completely thrilled by this scrutiny of the seminaries. Among the unimpressed was Thomas Gumbleton, the Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit. Thomas Gumbleton is the darling of America's socially progressive Catholics, and he's long been a thorn in the side of the orthodox hierarchy. Twelve months ago he announced, on reaching the retirement age of 75, that he was going to break with convention and refuse to tender his resignation to Rome, because, as he explained, the resignations of progressive bishops are always accepted, and with the way the American Catholic church is going, he felt that he should stick around for just a little while longer.

Well back in October when the seminary inspections were about to begin, the Religion Report producer Noel Debien recorded a fascinating interview with Bishop Gumbleton, of which we were only able to run a small excerpt. So this week we're bringing it to you in full: Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, talking with Noel Debien.

Noel Debien: You're a bishop of the roman Catholic Church. Do you believe that a gay man - a same-sex oriented person - can be a priest, and a good one?

Thomas Gumbleton: Absolutely. I know many. The proof is out there. I know bishops who are gay and who are good bishops. So yes, absolutely I accept that.

Noel Debien: In terms of implementing the Instrumentum Laboris, do you think the seminaries will be successful in identifying and removing same-sex oriented seminarians?

Thomas Gumbleton: No. That's an impossible objective. One of two things will happen: either you'll find candidates who have so severely repressed their sexuality that they really haven't come to a clear determination whether they're homosexual or heterosexual, they're repressed, and that's very dangerous. People that do that, sooner or later are going to break out, in a sense, and they won't be able to maintain that severe repression that is required all their life - and so you get problems. Or people will not tell the truth, they'll just go deeper into the closet, as they call it, and will evade those kind of questions. So we're still going to be ordaining homosexual people, only they won't be identified, they won't be comfortable with themselves, they won't be at peace with themselves, they'll be living a dishonest life. And that is going to be hurtful

Noel Debien: From your own observation, how effective are the gay clergy and bishops you know in maintaining a healthy celibacy?

Thomas Gumbleton: They are as successful as the heterosexuals. I don't think you would find a major difference there. Heterosexual priests fall short at times, sometimes they pick [themselves] up and they can go on and be OK, other times they decide to leave. That same thing will happen with homosexual priests. The main thing is to be able to be a fully developed person, either homosexual or heterosexual, and to have made a mature, adult decision to be a celibate. And then also to learn how to be a celibate, which means how to be a loving person, a person who is loved, and yet maintain the discipline of celibacy. Whether you're gay or straight or heterosexual, you can be a blessing to the church, and a great gift to the church.

Noel Debien: The approach that's being taken currently is in reaction to, the sexual abuse crisis, which at least has been openly reported in the United States, and therefore to other countries looks like it could be worse than in other places, and I suggest that may be because it is reported so accurately?

Thomas Gumbleton: Yes. And one of the things that bothers me is why the US bishops agreed for this kind of investigation of our seminaries. Why aren't they doing it in France, or Germany, or Africa - or anywhere else? The US bishops I think are just so Rome-dominated it I guess, or Vatican dominated, that they just fall down and do whatever the Vatican says. And other hierarchies wouldn't stand for this.

Noel Debien: There are those who are very concerned that this reaction - or investigation - into US seminaries is a reaction to a very serious problem with clerical sexual abuse. One of the primary things that the Instrumentum Laboris is looking for is the identification of homosexual behaviour in seminaries, as if this is going to be a solution to that problem. Is that, from your perspective, an appropriate way to deal with the problems the American church has been having in that regard?

Thomas Gumbleton: No, it's not an appropriate way. No.1, the problems that we've had in the US church with sexual abuse, do not arise from having homosexuals in the priesthood or in the seminaries. The problems come from the fact that we had a seminary system that produced priests who were very seriously under-developed as persons, so they came out of the seminary.. Well as some people have put it about themselves, 'I went into the seminary at 14 and 12 years later I came out of the seminary and I was still 14'. Now, they meant of course psychologically or developmental terms, but chronologically you're 26 years old, but they're still in an adolescent stage of development. That's the root problem. In all of that, it actually was made known to the bishops back in 1971, when we had a psychological study of the US priesthood, and the study showed that almost two-thirds of the priests in the United States were under-developed persons. Only a handful, maybe 8% were developed, and another 12%, 15% were going through a developing stage. And another 8% were maldeveloped. Well that's a huge problem, and I saw it happen, and I know that it was a priest who was not able to relate with adults, especially adult women, but could relate with kids, and so that's what they did.

Noel Debien: Can I suggest though, there would be those who say that because these under-developed clergy have tended overwhelmingly to identify with young adolescent males, that this therefore may be related to the presence of those who are same-sex oriented in large percentage in the seminaries and in the priesthood?

Thomas Gumbleton: I don't think that necessarily follows. People going through adolescence very often go through a homosexual period before they really identify their sexuality and clarify their sexuality. And so when they're an underdeveloped person, they haven't really come to full clarity about what they are, whether they're homosexual or heterosexual. And of course it was a lot easier for priests, if they're under-developed, to take the altar boys out than it would be to take the choirgirls out. I mean if a priest is taking a dozen adolescent girls someplace, most people would raise their eyebrows, but when it was the boys, nobody thought anything of it. That didn't mean that all of them were necessarily homosexual, in fact I'm sure many of them weren't. And they also didn't get as much attention, but a number of the problems with priests were with young teenage girls as well as teenage boys.

Noel Debien: What have you noticed about the seminarians who are presently in U.S. seminaries - at least the ones you have to deal with as assistant bishop of Detroit, would you have more concerns about those who have graduated over the last two or three decades since the reform of seminaries, or would you have more concern about those who graduated before seminaries began to change in the U.S.A.?

Thomas Gumbleton Actually there's three periods. You're making it sound like two. I would say there were three. There was the seminary that I went through, that was a pre-Vatican II seminary, a "Council of Trent" seminary. That was very tightly controlled. Very strict rules. A very clear rejection of having the people in the seminary develop human relationships. That was ruled out. You were warned constantly about particular friendships. And you were forbidden to have any kind of association with girls and later on with women. You were under very strict control. If your were a boarding student, even more so. Even for the person who was a commuting student - you know high school and college Then shortly after the council in the 60's the seminary system was breaking down. And so all kinds of things began to happen that were not very healthy. They went from a very tightly controlled seminary system to one that seemed to have no control at all. And that was more at the college and theological periods. And then there was a reaction against that, and now we're moving into a third period now where we don't get the young students any more, we get the older students, but they tend to be students who are very, very ... well, conservative- and even to the point of being rigid, and also people who.. You know they talk about` a second career. Well, very often it was a person who never was that successful in his first career, and now he's going to try the priesthood. And so, I don't think we have the best candidates now. They're older. They're pretty well set in their ways, but they're also going into a seminary where they're being put back into a very tight control again. And now we're turning out priests that are in a very sheltered situation, and they get very involved with liturgy, very involved with ritual and that sort of thing. And again, they're not able to relate with people very well. They come out into parishes now and they can't interact with the people of the parish. We find they don't fit, and that's turning out to be a quite serious problem.

Noel Debien: Is this likely to change the tone of the American Catholic church, which internationally, when we look at it from outside seems engaged in quite a robust dialogue between progressive, conservative; forces that seem to talk of open and free debate about issues.

Thomas Gumbleton: That's certainly true among the laity. It's not true with the bishops and probably the majority of the clergy right now. Since the Bishops' Conference in the United States has reversed from one where there wide open discussion and lots of interaction among the bishops and respect for a whole diversity of opinions and so on. Now we're back to a kind of a conference where people are afraid to speak out. And so you find everybody trying to conform and trying to be loyal to the statements of the Vatican. All of that of course has happened since the criteria were changed after 1978. And put so much emphasis on a bishop .. anyone named to be a bishop had to be totally loyal. And so that meant if you ever wrote an article that said something about the rights of women in the church - not even bringing up ordination. But if you brought up ordination that was totally out of the question for you to ever be thought of as a bishop - even writing about the rights of women, or certainly the issue of homosexuality or other issues that in the church really are not definitively settled. Any person who had a public record on that could not be named a bishop. You had to be totally loyal. You had to be totally "orthodox". You had to be obedient. Totally conforming. That's the kind of bishop we have today. So you don't find really good open discussion going on in the bishops' conference today.

Noel Debien: There is another sense in which this instrumentum laboris is very interested in determining whether the seminary professors, seminarians and priests who have graduated have complete loyalty to magisterium. And by Magisterium they name documents such as Humanae Vitae, Veritatis Splendor, Pastoral Care of Homosexuals. They name these documents and they ask "Are they conforming?"

Thomas Gumbleton: Exactly. Those are the ones they name. But how about Centesimus Annus - the one that says "War never again"? Nobody holds people to that teaching. Or the whole social justice agenda. You know Pope John Paul had many powerful statements on social justice, But those aren't the items that are held up that you have to conform to . And so a lot of bishops don't. But they certainly hold these items up. And that is where all this emphasis is.

Noel Debien: These documents, by the way, focus on sexual and reproductive health.

Thomas Gumbleton: Yes. Most of them do, or personal morality rather than social morality.

Noel Debien: Is it fair to say that the emphasis being placed in the contemporary Catholic Church - and what appears to be being done to American Seminaries - is choosing certain aspect of teaching and laying emphasis on these at the expense of others?

Thomas Gumbleton: Yes that is what's happening. You can see that in the Bishops' conference. In the United States we've spent the last 30 years spending huge amounts of money, lots of staff people, energy what have you , trying to reverse "Roe V Wade". We've spent almost no time in trying to reverse the US public policy on weapons of mass destruction. And that, in Vatican II is put parallel with the condemnation of Abortion. And yet we spend all kinds of time, money, energy, people, on the abortion issue, but we don't on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, and US public policy on that issue is totally contrary to the church, as is public policy on abortion. And yet we don't put anything into the one, but we do all our money and energy into the other.

Noel Debien: Do you have any analysis of why that may be the case, why personal morality is being stressed?

Thomas Gumbleton: Well because you don't find the same so-called "patriotic" reaction. You know, if the church starts speaking out against US policy in regard to war, weapons of mass destruction and that sort of thing, right away you are going to find out you don't love your country. You're not patriotic. The church is against the government and so on. And it puts a lot of pressure on the bishops because many of their big donors are also people who are big donors, well frankly, to the Republican party, which more even than the Democratic party supports those issues of weapons,and military policy and so on. And so people may not pay attention to what they say about abortion, but they don't attack the bishops for it so much. A small group of people do, but no the majority. Whereas when you start talking about issues of war and weapons and what the United States needs to "defend itself", you are going to get a huge reaction form the Catholic community and especially the conservative Catholic community.

Noel Debien: So you analysis is that the bishops are largely being pragmatic about what they can achieve?

Thomas Gumbleton: Well and also what's not going to threaten their contributions.

Noel Debien: That's a very bleak picture?

Thomas Gumbleton: It is a bleak picture, I agree, and its getting bleaker.

Noel Debien: How do you keep yourself motivated though? As a bishop you would be identified as perhaps the most progressive of the American bishops?

Thomas Gumbleton: Well that's only because the others are dying out. There were lots like me a few years ago.

Noel Debien: I read a report that you have passed the age of retirement and have decided not to offer you resignation?

Thomas Gumbleton: Right. That's true.

Noel Debien: In the tone of the Australian church, that would be most surprising because all bishops fall in line here and offer it immediately.

Thomas Gumbleton: And they do here too. And of course the ones that are accepted immediately are those that are progressive, and those that are not, they stay on.

David Rutledge: Thomas Gumbleton, the Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit, on the line there with Noel Debien.

And you're listening to the Religion Report, on ABC Radio National Summer, Radio Australia and the world wide web.

MUSIC

David Rutledge: Finally this week: when East Timor gained its independence in May 2002, amid the celebrations there were fears about the psychological toll that years of repression and violence would inevitably take on the population.

Among the many Australians who have been working alongside the East Timorese since then is Sister Michelle Reid, a Benedictine nun who's been in East Timor since the year 2000. She started out there as an English teacher, but then in 2001 she began working at the Becora Prison in Dili. Many of the inmates there are former militia members who've been convicted of atrocities against civilians; others are men whose lives have been destroyed by the long years of conflict. And working in the prison has given Sister Michelle an opportunity to witness the effects of the conflict in a particularly immediate way.

Sian Prior was in East Timor in July last year, and she caught up with Sister Michelle Reid in Dili, and asked her to reflect on what the prisoners are going through.

Michelle Reid: You know, I think that generally their first suffering is just being separated from family, so mostly the hardest issue is depression for the men, and not knowing how their family were dealing, particularly if they were militia, their families would still be in the villages where a lot of them had committed crime. So knowing if there was any retaliation happening to their families or children, where their wives were able to feed and clothe their kids, was most probably the biggest form of deprivation for them.

Sian Prior: And once you did start to discover what their crimes had been, how did you feel about that? Because presumably some of them were horrific and for some people, unforgivable.

Michelle Reid: Yes, I think the first time I heard one man tell his story about how he was a militia, and he thought he was saving a man's life by having his ear cut off and then making him eat the ear in front of everybody. He thought that would humiliate him enough and that the Commander would let him go. But then the Commander said to him, 'Now you shoot him, kill him.' And he did that. And I suppose the benefit of not knowing the crime until later means you've already established a relationship, so you get to know some of their personalities, some of their struggles, and I suppose you're able to be a little bit more compassionate to their situation.

Sian Prior: So of all the needs here in East Timor, and they seem infinite really, why did it seem to you that the needs of sentenced prisoners should take precedence, should take up your energy?

Michelle Reid: Perhaps it wasn't really a choice I made, perhaps I fell into it more. I think lots of people who've worked with Timorese will say that one of the downsides is they can be quite stubborn, and that certainly is a generalisation, and it's not all Timorese. But you could speak to people in agriculture, it's sometimes difficult to change their farming methods or try a different way of doing things. In the prison, I had like the ideal captured group, no outside influences, no peer group pulling them away, no family demands on them, and the idea was not to change them, but to create a safe place within the prison where they could come and change themselves, and I think our responsibility is to keep the environment stimulating, allow them to experiment, allow them to make a mistake and learn from it, and keep supporting them.

Sian Prior: Is there one individual in particular you could talk about the changes you've seen in that prisoner over the years?

Michelle Reid: Ramos will be released next year. He isn't a militia, he killed his brother, and he had lost three children, had died, his father had died, he'd had various siblings die, and his mother was dying, and he and his wife and his two surviving children, were in his brother's house with his mother, while she was dying, and I think after a couple of weeks, they needed to return to their own house to attend to the farm and to sleep and so forth. And in that absence she died. When he found out and came back, he was very distraught. Now whether he exhibited some unusual behaviour, but his brother told the local villagers he was crazy, and that he shouldn't be let into the house, and so they tried to restrain him, and then he and his brother had a fight and his brother was killed.

And he was devastated. He tells me he found himself in a ditch, crying, knowing his mother was dead and that he'd killed he'd brother, and he took himself to the police station, he turned himself in. And I think watching him over the years, and he was one who suffered depression, and he talked about his depression and dealing with being away from his family, and his family weren't able to come and visit because of the cost and the distance involved, and he has a talent in art. So we used to draw and paint and various other things. And then after a couple of years, there must have been visitors or somebody coming to the prison and interviewing prisoners, and they said to him, What do you do? And he said to them, I'm an artist. And he looked across at me and he winked. And I thought, Oh, isn't that wonderful, because that's his perception. He wasn't having his identity based on the crime, and for him to be able to say 'I'm an artist', I thought, 'Yes, you've got it, Ramos, that's what you are.'

He'll be released half-way through 2006, and he's already made up his mind that he's going to join Artimorus, the local art group that's doing tremendous work in Timor, and so that he can go and learn more. And so I thought, that's wonderful.

Sian Prior: Michelle, this is a very Catholic country, the Catholic church has a lot of power here; it's also a country where women have an average of about 8 children. Your population is going to be a major issue in this country. Do you feel critical of the Catholic church in East Timor?

Michelle Reid: I think the Catholic church is in a very difficult situation. There's very few priests and so it's very difficult for the clergy to be able to pastor huge parishes, and it is a big issue, population. Fifty-percent of the population are under 15. The whole thing about birth control is a big issue, AIDS, even though it's very, very small at the moment, that is still an issue, and you have all these young people emerging with no employment, they're going to get married younger and younger and the women are going to have more and more babies, and the death rate for women in childbirth and early infancy deaths is still of great concern. So I think the church has to be able to work realistically in that, and the same with just recently in the demonstrations that we had and the bishops had called on (Prime Minister) Alkatiri to make prostitution illegal, I think that was not a positive move for women, and for that industry, and for protecting the women who are really victims, and for controlling it. You just drive everything underground. So I think it's a very tenuous sort of situation for the church leaders, and I don't think it's going to get any easier, I think it's going to get harder, because there's a lot of other denominational groups coming in that will threaten their number game, if that's the way you look at it. I think too, the young people are going to be looking for something more than just being preached at.

David Rutledge: Sister Michelle Reid, of the Good Samaritan Sisters of the Order of St Benedict, speaking there with Sian Prior in Dili.

And that's it from the Religion Report this week - don't forget to visit the website - abc.net.au/religion, choose the Religion Report from the program list and you'll find a transcript and podcast of today's program.

Thanks to Noel Debien and John Diamond - and this has been the final in the Religion Report's Summer Series - next week we begin a whole new year of programs for 2006, and we celebrate the return of Stephen Crittenden to the presenter's chair - so join us then. I'm David Rutledge - bye for now.